Gaming Laptops Reviews

Gigabyte G5 Gaming Laptop Review – Aesthetically Pleasing, But Loud

Gigabyte G5 Laptop Feature Image

Introduction

Gigabyte have been a mainstay in the PC gaming space for as long as I can remember. This manufacturer is one of the most well rounded brands when it comes to components, offering a wide array of options for consumers to sink their teeth into. At one end of the spectrum you’ve got access to solid high-end liquid CPU coolers designed for top-end systems, and at the other end there’s a massive range of monitors at varying resolutions geared towards budget, mid-range, or high-end PCs.

Gigabyte are also pretty well known for their gaming laptops. These products tend to be pretty expensive as a general rule, but Gigabyte seem to be pushing a range of options for price conscious buyers looking to get the best value for money options. We’ve covered a few of their laptops in the past, but the Gigabyte G5 may be the best choice for consumers looking to spend the least, but secure an extremely powerful laptop.

In this review we’ll be delving into the features, design choices, and performance of the Gigabyte G5, whilst also answering some key questions about gaming laptops and why they’re such a solid choice in today’s market.

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Are Gaming Laptops a Solid Option in Today’s Market?

Around five or six years ago gaming laptops were not great options in the PC gaming space. Hardware wasn’t quite at the same performance level that it is today, and these all-in-one systems were much more expensive in comparison, weakening the value-proposition considerably versus a desktop PC or even a prebuilt. If we fast forward to today, I’d argue that laptops are a significantly better option for consumers that want to avoid building their own PC, or need a more portable setup.

Gigabyte G5 Laptop Lid Back

But this is entirely dependent on the laptop that you pick, and the price of the laptop. Although there are a number of great laptops out there, there are also a multitude of laptops that we would recommend avoiding due to weaker component choices, or because the price isn’t worth what’s on offer. And this is the biggest takeaway that we’d recommend consumers consider when picking up a laptop. Obviously use-case, and budget also play into this consideration, but make sure you always pick up a laptop that is better or similarly priced to what you’d have to pay if you were building a desktop machine.

Looping back to the question that we’ve asked, I’d argue that gaming laptops are a solid option. You get the bonus of portability, and an all-in-one system that is fully assembled and requires very little effort to setup beyond logging into a few things. Although there are clear limitations to a laptop if you can pick one up for a reasonable price you’ll be able to play all of your favourite games at solid framerates.

Gigabyte G5 Design & Aesthetics

Upon opening up the box for the Gigabyte G5, I was pleasantly surprised by how small the G5 is. The size of the chassis makes this laptop small enough to easily fit in a big, which also makes it perfect for transporting. In terms of weight, the G5 sits around the 1.9Kg mark, so it is a little bit hefty, but this weight will disappear if you’ve put it into a messenger bag or rucksack. Opening up the laptop you’re greeted with a 144Hz, 15 inch screen. It is a little bit disappointing that the screen is so small, but ultimately with the size of this laptop, there are limitations to how big the screen can be without running into weight problems.

Gigabyte G5 Laptop Wide

Moving down a bit, the G5 offers a chiclet style full-size keyboard that includes a numpad. So for all of you strategy and simulation gamers out there, this laptop is perfect. The keyboard does offer RGB backlighting of which you can choose between 15 pre-set colours. It is a bit saddening that this isn’t per-key programmable, but I can’t argue with this that much based on the price. I’m personally not a fan of the chiclet style keys as they feel very weightless, but I will admit that this keyboard was effectively silent, so I imagine this wouldn’t annoy anyone if you’re on the train or bus, typing away.

The touchpad feels very responsive. Double-finger scrolling, or tapping to activate applications was very quick, and I’m a big fan of the overall responsiveness. As for the rest of the aesthetic, Gigabyte have definitely taken a stealthy approach here. The all-black chassis does look quite sophisticated, but there are areas of gloss that I would rather be matte to avoid any finger prints, or sweat marks from an intense session of gaming. But besides this, the overall design is solid. I do think Gigabyte need to integrate an easier way to turn off the RGB backlights, but ignoring this, the darker aesthetic is quite a nice look.

Key Specs and Features

In this section we’ll be taking a look at the key specs and principal features of the Gigabyte G5 Laptop, followed by some performance metrics. This laptop is loaded to the brim with some great features and powerful components, so we’ve broken all of the standout ones below.

Gigabyte G5 Specs

Key SpecsGigabyte G5 Gaming Laptop
CPUIntel Core i5 12500H
Graphics CardNVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060
RAM16GB DDR4 3200MHz
Storage512GB Gigabyte Gen4 NVMe SSD
IO Ports1x USB 2.0 Type A, 1x USB 3.2 Gen1, 2x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type C, 1x Mini DP 1.4, 1x HDMI, 2-in-1 Audio Jack, 1x Microphone Jack, 1x Ethernet Port, 1x Micro SD Card Reader
DisplayFHD 1920×1080 144Hz
WiFiWiFi 6E
Operating SystemWindows 11
Battery54Wh

Features

Excellent 1080p 144Hz Display

Gigabyte’s G5 Gaming Laptop sports a 1080p, 144Hz, 15-inch monitor designed for gaming. If you’re the kind of consumer looking for a buttery smooth display experience, the G5 will not disappoint. This vibrant screen is perfect for some competitive gaming, minimising any stutters or artifacts on screen.

Gigabyte G5 Laptop Lid Closed

Super Responsive Touchpad

I’ve briefly mentioned this in the design section of this article, but it is worth touching on in the features section. The touchpad on the G5 is super responsive and I’d even go a step further to say that it’s a solid option for gaming. Laptop touchpads are often slow and sluggish, but I genuinely felt that the touchpad was almost tuned to respond much quicker. Although this is a smaller feature, I’d argue it’s one of the more important ones based on the fact that you’ll be using the touchpad very often.

Gigabyte G5 Laptop Trackpad
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Solid Workstation Performance

Although the Core i5 12500H isn’t the most powerful 12th-Gen CPU, but it still offers great performance for a multifaceted system. The 12 cores and 16 threads should give you enough legroom to handle a variety of workstation-based applications.

Gigabyte G5 Laptop Keyboard

Decent Speaker Setup

Gigabyte‘s G5 offers a pretty solid speaker setup for those that haven’t purchased headphones or a headset. This laptop is equipped with DTS:X Ultra audio, offering solid quality even under a little bit more stress. Although these speakers won’t be able to provide insane quality comparative to a soundbar or cinema setup, I’d say that the sound quality is good enough that you can enjoy a gaming session without any scratchy noises.

Gigabyte G5 Laptop Laptop Stickers

Modern IO Options

The G5 Gaming Laptop offers a good set of rear IO, allowing you to easily plug in accessories and peripherals for a full gaming setup. In terms of USB ports, consumers have access to two Type-C USB 3.2 Gen2 ports, a Type-A USB 3.2 Gen1 port, and a USB 2.0 option. For those with extra displays, you can choose from Mini DP 1.4, or HDMI with HDCP. There’s also 1 Gigabit LAN for those that prefer a stable internet connection, or WiFi 6E, providing insanely high speeds.

Gigabyte G5 Laptop Right IO
Gigabyte G5 Laptop Left IO

Gaming Performance Benchmarks

Now we’ll be delving into the most important section of this article – the benchmarks. The Gigabyte G5 gaming laptop has been put through the wringer with a plethora of gaming benchmarks, designed to determine how this laptop handles modern triple A titles, along with popular Esports games in a variety of different settings. All of our full runs are located on our component benchmarking channel – Benched. There you’ll find a plethora of components being tested in a myriad of popular games.

Cyberpunk 2077

First off in Cyberpunk 2077, we ran two different benchmarks. One had DLSS Frame Generation and Ray-Tracing enabled, and the other was set to High settings with nothing extra turned on. Unfortunately, in both of these benchmarks we saw some pretty poor performance across both runs. During the DLSS benchmark, framerates were all over the place. The laptop fans spun up and were extremely loud in an attempt to keep the system cool, which I imagine was probably causing some thermal throttling, as temperatures were quite high too.

It was difficult to ascertain an average framerate in both of these benchmarks because there were so many drops and points where we’d see stutters. We did get consistent 60FPS a couple of times, but this was then followed up by more frame drops and stuttering. I would have chalked this up to Ray-Tracing, but with all of the extra settings turned off, the game was still stuttering, which doesn’t bode well for other games, but this could just be a Cyberpunk problem, which wouldn’t surprise me.

Frame Generation + Ray-Tracing

1080p High

F1 2022

In F1 2022 performance was a little bit stronger during this benchmark. Even with Ray-Tracing enabled framerates were much more consistent overall. We were able to reach around 60FPS on average with frames dipping to 50FPS every so often. This benchmark did feel a bit rough at points, there were moments that you can see in the footage where there is slow-down as the cars sort of shift back. Although it wasn’t nearly as bad compared to Cyberpunk 2077, there is still noticeable lag at points.

Spiderman Miles Morales

In Spiderman Miles Morales performance did take a bit of a dive here too. We figured that framerates would be better with a lack of Ray-Tracing but even with Frame Generation enabled we were definitely expecting better. During our Frame Gen benchmark we were able to consistently reach around 60FPS which is playable. However, we experienced quite a few drops during areas of intensity that let this benchmark down. Frame Generation clearly isn’t able to hold the RTX 4060’s hand here, which is resulting in much weaker performance.

As you can expect, the standard 1080p high benchmark wasn’t much better. Framerates were somewhat similar with 60FPS being a far less consistent target, and frame drops happening here and there. Again, I’d argue that this game is playable, but we were just expecting better performance overall from an RTX 4000 card. This clearly isn’t the GPU to be playing modern games with.

Frame Gen

1080P High

Fortnite

Unexpectedly, gameplay was much smoother in Fortnite at 1080p Competitive settings. Here we enabled DLSS, and dialled everything to low to ensure maximum framerates. Gameplay teetered around the 100FPS mark which is pretty reasonable. We’d obviously love to see this GPU surpass the 144Hz mark, but this is not possible unfortunately. Overall we were pretty happy with the gameplay experience here, but even lower-end 1080p titles struggle to a degree with this laptop.

Conclusion

Gigabyte G5 Gaming Laptop
  • Features
  • Design
  • Performance
  • Value For Money
3.1

Summary

Unfortunately, Gigabyte’s G5 RTX 4060 Gaming Laptop is a bit of a disappointing innovation. Whilst it has a solid set of features, a decent range of specs on paper, and a minimalist design that I quite like, it just doesn’t deliver when it comes to gaming. During all of our gaming benchmarks, we saw consistent frame drops, low framerates, and even when features like DLSS or Frame Generation were enabled, this didn’t help. Ultimately, this is supposed to a budget-oriented gaming laptop for those that need an all-in-one system that doesn’t cost a fortune. However, it seems entirely pointless to me, to include a nice 144Hz screen, when you’re not even able to reach framerates of that level. This laptop is also harmed by how loud it is and how hot it gets during gaming. It is quite likely that some thermal throttling is going on which is resulting in the weaker performance, but it is astonishing how loud the G5 gets when even under the slightest bit of pressure. I think this laptop is a good purchase for those willing to settle for 60FPS, but if you’re not, I wouldn’t recommend picking it up. It is clear that the RTX 4060 can’t really handle modern titles which is a disappointing prospect for how the desktop card will be received too. Either way, I feel NVIDIA needs to go back to the drawing board with their laptop RTX 4060 card.

Pros

✅ Relatively solid set of features.

✅ Minimalist design.

✅ Somewhat reasonably priced.

Cons

❌ Weak gaming performance even at 1080p.

❌ Cannot handle Ray-Tracing at all.

❌ Even DLSS and Frame Generation won’t help.

editor
Jay Harris is an expert in everything PC hardware! With a degree in Cybersecurity, and a PC hardware background Jay has all of the technical knowledge required to make informed recommendations. Jay is an avid keyboard builder and gamer, with a major passion for tech. In fact, Jay's personal rig boasts a white RX 7900 XTX graphics card, inside of the Lian O11D Mini - a true enthusiast's dream!